After a freak accident in 2021 left Chase Friedman from Los Angeles with a severe spinal injury, doctors told him he could be in a wheelchair for life. The morning after a New Year’s party at a friend’s house in Philadelphia, he fell in the bathroom injuring his C4 to C7 vertebrae and requiring spinal fusion surgery.
After the surgery, doctors told Friedman what happens next is anybody’s guess, but if he ever wanted to walk again, he would need to do some serious rehab work and do everything possible “to stay positive.” So for the next year, he worked harder than he ever had to get back on his feet and he documented his amazing journey on his TikTok. “Eventually I felt like I kind of got to a good place and I stopped doing rehab,” Friedman recalls, “I was still in the gym and working out on my own, but it was at the beginning of this year when I decided I wanted to run a 5K.”
This new goal meant Friedman would have to return to his rehab regimen. He still has a long way to go, but just last week, he ran halfway around the track without stopping, a feat that would have seemed impossible just a couple of years ago. And Friedman credits a lot of his progress to following the advice he first got back in 2021 about staying positive. “You have to get your mind in the right place, even though it's the hardest time in the world,” he says, “Not only is that just good for you physically, but mentally proving to yourself day after day that you can go past your limits.”
Source: INSIDE EDITION